Rain refracts against the night sky, illuminating the clouds in an endless blaze of flickering neon signs and high-powered lamps. There’s never true darkness in Algonquin. Only differing shades of amber, violet, and Blue that keep your pupils dilated and your body taught, your fingers tense at your side.

In the distance, far from the settlement, a decrepit hydroelectric compound sputters enough light pollution to be illuminated from orbit. It’s one of the many hazy jewels that keeps the planet alive. Another ancient installation kept operational through divine incompetence alone, seemingly by accident. A mausoleum of civilization encased in thousand-year-old vines, upkeep handled by the dutiful lost tribes, pockets of intelligent life simply forgotten.

Like those other neglected names on star charts, one day Algonquin will go dark for good.

But not within the disposable lifetimes of the hooded, grimaced drunks you pass as you limp from The Columbia Manor.

Following your ‘meal,’ you both linger on the muddy street outside The Deseret. It’s the flophouse. Your temporary home for these few months. Scattered opium-eaters drift amongst themselves as they, too, attempt to sober up and gain entry. They won’t get a warm bed. But, it’ll be dry. Safer than out here, you think, as a trio of Black-hooded figures dip into an alleyway. You clear your throat and spit a congealed leafy mass into the dilapidated roadway.

Ø looks down at you expectantly. She reflexively waits for your signal to enter. Your soft hands meet the discolored plasticwood door, and you push through the collected mud into a wash of tobacco smoke.

The door behind you auto-locks with a thunk. Your mare lowers her head into the two-meter by two-meter entry room. You, too, contort to stand before the check-in desk. Behind the criss-crossed chicken-wire security screen sits the unwelcoming concierge, a gout-riddled, feeble spectre of a man.

A single unshielded metal fan distorts the airflow opposite the invalid. Its antique manganese-copper blades shove the smoke from his tobacco pipe into your faces and gyrate the light above. The lone bulb twirls, beating rhythmic shadows. As your eyes follow them, you became conscious of your nausea, antenna and carapace gruel gurgling at the top of your throat.

The sign next to him gestures towards the metal wiring of his hive: DANGER, ELECTRIFIED. He taps his cage with a simple wooden digit for emphasis, assuming that you cannot read the faded cursive like most. Whether from a lack of education or from narcotics overuse, he does not care.

He eyes you both and keeps a somber face as he reads off the rules. Same as he always does. Every night, as if you’ve first met.

“No fightin’, no drinkin’, no druggin’, no thievin’, no loud noises,” he sneers with the handful of teeth that remain, “and be polite.” He smiles at his last bylaw and raps the overnight rate listing, sealed into his desk by an opaque sheet of lamination, resealed with every inflated repricing. His sarcastic whisper carries the twisted stench of bleeding gums and stale smoke.

“You sure you want to keep bringing your lady to a place like this?”

You slap the credits against the counter, saying nothing in return. One of concierge’s hands remains below his desk, his fleshy digit no doubt on the trigger of a weapon that can eviscerate everything from your hips down. With a wry laugh, his prosthetic wooden digits claw the wet cash into the metal cage, into his lascivious care.

“Another night it is for Mister and Missus Barron, the aristocrats. Hammock number twelve. Same as last night, and the night before that...” he muses. His false arm presses some unseen button below, rusted machinery creaking to life. With a whirr and click, up draws the aged metal door to the repurposed warehouse’s inner sanctum.

You both stumble in the half-dark, illuminated by the round-the-clock Red industrial lights that dot the ceiling. Unceremoniously, the door bolts behind you. It’s late, and you totter alongside the drug fiends that have found safety for another cycle.

You approach the hammock. It’s a simple sheet, drawn on one side with cable, the other held by a rotting piece of plasticwood. Better than the hangover rope where the poorest souls dangle. Discolored, smelling of sulfur, those lost in the jungles of New Port Moresby would call your accommodation luxurious.

In domestic harmony, you take your positions on opposite sides, pulling the fabric taught. With a mental countdown, you both roll inwards, meeting in the middle of the poly-jute canvas. Any hesitation, and one of you could flip face-first into the mud, the initiation rite of all The Deseret’s fresh arrivals.

Once firmly inside your shuck, you both writhe into uncomfortable shapes. Elbows and knees move imperfectly. Ø’s oblong face knocks into your eyes more than once as she adjusts herself. You finally end on your back, your left arm crushed under the weight of her torso, your leg lodging itself beneath the gladiatrix as hers wraps around you. Her elliptical snout juts across your neck to choking, making you wheeze for air.

Yet you remain still, all for the safety of counterbalance, in mutual discomfort.

Behind her tired eyes, she complains. Her subconscious broadcasts her hatred. Of the garish lights, inescapable mud, stifling humidity, sulfuric bedding, of the overpriced flophouse that only years before she would have spaced from orbit without a moment’s thought. Your calming presence restrains her anger to only a brooding, again at the price of your own patience.

Because you, too, long for the comfort of anywhere else in the galaxy.

You force your eyes closed. With a lick of your lips, you purse your brow in frustration at yet more commotion. Your pupils strain against the omniscient lighting’s malaise, which is blocked momentarily by the shuffling of drunks. They could trip, knock heads, or splatter right on top of your slumber. You’re never safe from such nonsense.

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But your eyes drift open to find three Black poncho’d figures above you, one on either side and one at your feet, as their hands disappear maliciously beneath their plastics.

With tethered grace, you shout and fumble for towards your hip. Tilting your sidearm up with your free hand, you fire through your poncho at the figure lurking at the foot of the hammock, the slapping hammer reverberating against the slimy walls. The hot bullet hole in your jacket reveals a projectile that meets with the thug’s shoulder, coating a nearby hammock with gore. You pull the trigger further, letting your gun impotently impotently click as your body washes with fear.

Regret showers you for pawning most of your ammunition two months before in exchange for a proper meal.

Ø, alerted to your living nightmare, kicks out her hoof. She staggers the man behind her with unshorn keratin, striking his chest with twelve thousand Newtons of force. With no recourse, you roll to your side and tackle the third into the muck, digging your nails into his poncho and dragging him down, your hammock toppling with you.

Once on the ground, your attacker is revealed. The eyepatched human fumbles under his jacket and spits in your face. Chewing tobacco poisons both your lungs.

One hand of his grips your neck, its stubby digits slipping against your oily skin. In your death spiral, you drive your fingers into his ribs, clawing in between the notches. Underneath his plastic poncho, bending back your nails, you recognize a machete’s hilt. In a single fluid motion he whips it from its sheathe, nearly taking off your ear, sending you spinning into the sludge and beneath the hammock of a convulsing drunk.

You stumble to your feet, looking past the comatose addict to your opponent. He twists his wrist, balancing the metal, swiping at air to close the distance and attack you from out of reach. Realizing his mis-step, he advances towards you, bringing the machete down into the fabric, cutting it taut, sending the layabout head-first into the mud.

Muffled light reflects from his multi-carbon steel blade, and after making the tough decision, you turn and run. With a leap, you stumble across the plasticwood beam and jolt the entire row’s occupants from their beds. In pursuit, your attacker swings his machete about, slicing through textile and traveler as the growing crowds cascade away from his warpath.

Over his shoulder, Ø grapples with her own adversary. With a wide arc, she bores her left fist into his tattooed cheek. Her punch’s force comes from the tips of her hooves to meet at her knuckles, nearly bare of sorrel fur. Velocity spins her opponent around into a decayed support beam, rattling the building. As his lip bleeds, molars dislodged, he clumsily swings against the air, still hanging onto his tomahawk to keep your mare at bay. She brings her arms akimbo as they circle, flaring her nostrils as you feel her cursing.

If only she hadn’t pawned her trusty Star sidearm for a single night in a proper bed.

As you bolt for the exit, hands, paws, and claws met you from the growing perimeter of onlookers that hug the walls for safety. Some laugh and spit as the peanut gallery jabs you back into the fray. The one-eyed human laughs as you’re spun to face him again. With no weapon, you bring up your fists to put up a hopeless fight.

He swipes through the air, cutting your poncho across the arm. You shift to the right, and as he swings upwards, he cuts the hangover line, sending the last few unconscious drunks into the muck. You wheel as he flourishes towards your neck, nearly severing your windpipe with a grin. In response, you jump into him with your whole body weight, holding his elbow taut and tackling him into the ground.

He kicks and cusses, and with nothing else at your disposal, you bite your teeth into his arm, half-submerged in the pooled muck. The taste of blood and eternal sediment coats your tongue and lips. Each finger fights its own individual conflict as you try to rip the weapon from his hand. Finally, with a thrust upwards, he angles the blade towards your sternum.

With all your strength, the toes of your boots slipping as you grapple, you redirect it towards his own neck, slowly pressing the blade against his skin, trachea, and finally spinal cord as his gnawing, wailing skull sinks into the mud, the blood, light, and soil creating an unsightly sunset on the warehouse floor.

A passionate cry escapes the crowd, celebrating the second kill of your brief life, as the commotion turns to the gladiatrix.

She weaves through her opponent’s swipes, the tomahawk’s rocker-engraved triangular head too slow for a skilled mare light on her hooves. Ø rips the tattered fabric from a nearby hammock, coated with the diseased blood of its former occupant, and wraps it around her right fist. Employing it as a net, your retiarius waits for a cowardly swing from her dazed opponent, too defensive to make inroads for a kill.

Ensnaring the assassin’s arm, entangling the tomahawk, she drags him towards her chest and strikes his abdomen with her dominant left hand. Already stunned, with a fist pulverizing his diaphragm, the opposition vomits, adding to the flophouse’s alcoholic stench.

With a screech of rage, she grips her opponent’s poncho by the collar and flips him forward into the mud, bringing her hoof to his windpipe with a host of meaty crunches.

Tide turned, you both stare down the final assassin, wounded in his shoulder, as he shakily trains his revolver between the two of you. He bleeds profusely, twitching with pain as his injured muscles brace for the inevitable recoil. Following a kick from the crowd behind, he stands perfectly betwixt you both.

His eyes dart back and forth as he quickly realizes he’s now the prey.

He makes his rash decision and trains his barrel on you, holding his firing hand steady with the other. You freeze as you heard an ethereal, reactionary screech ring out from behind the assassin, that of your mare. Eyes fraught with murderous, reflexive intent to kill, Ø futilely lunges at the shooter, too far out of reach for contact.

With a pull of the trigger, the room heats further, deafening those nearby. The bullet lodges itself in the crowd behind you, throwing the tenants into a frenzy, some scurrying out of the way, others collapsing onto one another, collecting on the floor with cries of fear. The second pull fires a round into the ceiling, forming an additional rivet of water that leaks through the roof. With composure, the assassin trains the gun to your chest for a last blow.

Finally, a shot rings out.

The assassin’s torso shreds. Bits of Black poncho fly through his carved chest cavity, organs and tissue wrenching from bone. Without lungs, he can’t scream, and only watches in momentary confusion as his limbs separate with the full force of a shotgun blast that peppers him out of existence. His face is transfixed with a malaise of horror as the two-thirds of a body remaining fumble to the wet ground, echoing like bundles of rotten leaves hitting the warehouse floor.

You turn towards the crowd to discover your savior. The concierge.

His wooden block of a hand slides to merge into the forward grip of his smoking boxlock. He scowls once more with intent, scanning the room and investigating the several desecrated bodies. Precious linens shredded, stained more than usual. The old man spits out a gnarled mix of shag and yowls, baring his few teeth, training the gun on you. He yowls.

“No fightin’, I said!” He shouts. “Everyone out, we’re closed... And no refunds neither!”